Gilbertine Order

The Gilbertine Order was a Catholic religious institute of canons regular founded around 1130 by Gilbert of Sempringham in Sempringham, Lincolnshire, where Gilbert was the parish priest. It was the only completely English religious order and came to an end in the 16th century at the time of the Dissolution of the Monasteries. Gilbert set up buildings and a cloister for them against the north wall of the church, which stood on his land at Sempringham, and gave them a rule of life, enjoining upon them chastity, humility, obedience, and charity. Their daily necessaries were passed to them through a window by some girls chosen by Gilbert from among his people. when he was around 90 years old, some of the lay brothers at Sempringham rose up against him,

Habits

The Nuns wore a black tunic and a black scapular for work. They also wore a black lamb's wool head-dress with a coarse black cloth veil. (lined with lamb's wool) with shoes of red leather. When labouring, they would use the scapular. In choir, they each wore a white cowl. whereas Sempringham Priory, worth more than £200 a year, surrendered in 1538. Holgate was already the Bishop of Llandaff but translated to become Archbishop of York in 1545.

The Gilbertines were the only purely English order (except for one short-lived house in Scotland), therefore the Dissolution marked their permanent end.

Legacy

The Gilbertine legacy is fairly small; only fifteen extant manuscripts are associated with the Order, originating from only five of the Gilbertine houses. Four additional works ascribed to Gilbertines, but not surviving in Gilbertine copies, include the Vita of Gilbert of Sempringham, the Gilbertine Rule, the so-called 'Sempringham Continuation' to Le Livere de Reis Engleterre, and the works of Robert Mannyng.

The remains of one Gilbertine monastery, Malton Priory, have been incorporated into the parish church at Malton in North Yorkshire. The original monastery was established around 1150, and, though it has suffered considerable abuse, the surviving fragment remains impressive. Although the Priory at Sempringham was destroyed, the adjacent and contemporary parish church of St Andrew remains and some evidence of mediaeval decoration is still to be found.

The remains of Mattersey Priory are currently managed by English Heritage.

In 2001, British Channel 4 Television's archaeological series Time Team excavated a Gilbertine monastery in Chicksands, Bedfordshire. The programme was shown in 2002 as part of series 9 of Time Team.

Gilbertine revivals

Oblates of St Gilbert

In 1983, following celebrations of the 900th anniversary of Gilbert's birth, a number of lay people in the East Midlands undertook to sustain the memory and work of Gilbert and the Gilbertine Order by establishing a new secular order. The Oblates of St Gilbert exist to promote the Gilbertine contemplative spirit and to foster interest in the study of Gilbert and his Order. They are supported by the Cistercian monastery of Mount St Bernard Abbey in Leicestershire.

In about 1998, Carlos Aparecido Marchesani, a Catholic priest of the Archdiocese of São Paulo in Brazil, visited the Gilbertine Oblates as he had had a devotion to Saint Gilbert since his time as a seminarian in the United States. He obtained permission from his bishop to found a small religious community, the Fraternidade São Gilbert, ad experimentum, which was set up near São Paulo. This experimental community was dissolved in 2012.

The Companions of St Gilbert of Sempringham

A Catholic Gilbertine community, The Canons Regular of St Gilbert of Sempringham (GSmp), began in 2017 in Canada within the Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of Saint Peter. In August 2019 members discerned that a full restoration could not take place as was desired. The Companions of St Gilbert of Sempringham, which existed alongside the canons regular, not unlike a third order in structure and purpose, will now be the main expression of Gilbertine spirituality resulting from this attempt at a restoration; it had begun as a de facto association of the faithful.

In popular fiction

The detective novel The Beautiful Mystery (2012), by Louise Penny, is set in a fictional Gilbertine abbey in rural Quebec.

Notes

References

Bibliography

Brian Golding: Gilbert of Sempringham and the Gilbertine Order: Oxford: Oxford University Press: 1995:

External links

British History Online
The Cistercians in Yorkshire
Forbidden love in Watton
The UCL monastic archives
The Companions of St Gilbert of Sempringham